Noise is No. 1 quality-of-life complaint in NYC

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a man puts his fingers in his ears in New York's Times Square. Noise is New York City's biggest quality of life complaint. In 2013, the citys 311 hotline got more than 260,000 calls about excessive noise, up 30 percent in two years. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a workman uses a generator-powered jackhammer in New York's Times Square in New York. Iconic Times Square can be a noisy place with car horns, aircraft flying overhead and construction. One of the lesser-known legacies of the recently ended 12-year tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg was one of the nations toughest noise codes. Under it, every construction site must post a noise mitigation plan, while excessive noise from restaurants, sidewalks, even garbage trucks is illegal. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a workman uses a generator-powered jackhammer in New York's Times Square in New York. Iconic Times Square can be a noisy place with car horns, aircraft flying overhead and construction. One of the lesser-known legacies of the recently ended 12-year tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg was one of the nations toughest noise codes. Under it, every construction site must post a noise mitigation plan, while excessive noise from restaurants, sidewalks, even garbage trucks is illegal. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, two #7 New York City subway trains arrive in the 5th Avenue-Bryant Park station, in New York. Roaring electric motors, squealing breaks, whistles and bells can fill a subway tunnel as trains pull into the station. Plenty of places in the city has noise that tops 85 decibels, a level that can cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, two #7 New York City subway trains arrive in the 5th Avenue-Bryant Park station, in New York. Roaring electric motors, squealing breaks, whistles and bells can fill a subway tunnel as trains pull into the station. Plenty of places in the city has noise that tops 85 decibels, a level that can cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a #7 New York City subway train arrives in the 5th Avenue-Bryant Park station, in New York. Noise from screeching subway trains can be overwhelming, sometimes rising up out of the caverns trains operate in and into the buildings above. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a #7 New York City subway train arrives in the 5th Avenue-Bryant Park station, in New York. Noise from screeching subway trains can be overwhelming, sometimes rising up out of the caverns trains operate in and into the buildings above. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, people move through the turnstiles in the subway in New York's Times Square station. Screeching subway trains emit considerable noise in a city with one of the nation's toughest noise codes. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, people move through the turnstiles in the subway in New York's Times Square station. Screeching subway trains emit considerable noise in a city with one of the nation's toughest noise codes. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Dec. 4, 2013 photo, a man puts his fingers in his ears in New York's Times Square. Noise is New York City's biggest quality of life complaint. In 2013, the citys 311 hotline got more than 260,000 calls about excessive noise, up 30 percent in two years. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Silence, it seems, is the one thing in this city of more than 8 million that’s almost impossible to find, despite a major crackdown on excessive noise.

One of the lesser-known legacies of the recently ended 12-year tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg was one of the nation’s toughest noise codes. Under it, every construction site must post a noise mitigation plan, while excessive noise from restaurants, sidewalks, even garbage trucks is illegal.

Tickets range from $70 for a barking dog to $350 for honking your horn to as much as $8,000 for a nightclub playing loud music.

But despite thousands of violation notices filed with the city last year, health officials warn there are still plenty of places where decibels top 85, a level that can cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure. Some parts of the city frequently exceed 100 decibels – especially where planes swoop a few hundred feet over rooftops.

While there is no comprehensive list, the city says these are frequent sources of complaints for life-altering noise:

Times Square traffic

“This is the noisiest place in New York City!” declared Jesse Davis, who stood in the heart of Times Square handing out leaflets for psychic readings. “It’s toot, toot, toot, toot all day.”

For two decades, the 57-year-old has done this kind of work, handing out promotional materials for businesses, surrounded by a sea of cabs, cars and trucks, their drivers often laying on the horn to get pedestrians to move.

Davis tries to drown out the noise with music from his ear buds.

“This is New York, and this whole city is noisy,” he said. “But you get used to it – business is business.”

On a concrete island in the middle of the square is a shipping container-turned-gourmet food cart called the SnackBox, where clerk Eduardo Zevallos spends his days amid the cacophony “trying to tune it out.”

The worst noise? When an ambulance gets stuck in traffic just feet behind him on Broadway. “So for maybe five minutes, you have to listen to a drowning ambulance sound.”

Screeching subways

At P.S. 85 in Queens’ Astoria neighborhood, children and their teachers have a signal system: Touching a forefinger to the lips while lifting two fingers in the air.

That means stop everything because the overwhelming noise outside from the screeching elevated subway trains drowns out any kind of speech.

“It’s really loud, and our teacher has to stop every two minutes, or three, when the train comes,” said 8-year-old Nepheli Motamed, whose third-grade classroom is at the mercy of the trains.

Parents recently held a news conference to protest the noise, and they were interrupted 16 times in a half-hour by train squeals.

“This is attention deficit disorder forced on the kids because every few minutes they’re distracted and they have to constantly refocus,” said Evie Hantzopoulos, co-president of the school’s parent association.

City school officials say acoustic tiles have been installed in the classrooms facing the tracks.

But Nepheli said more needs to be done. “It would be easier to learn without the noise,” she said.

DUMBO din

Brooklyn’s DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is a former manufacturing district with lofty warehouses and sweeping Manhattan views that has become one of the city’s artsiest places.

But with the incessant bridge traffic and overhead subway lines, it’s also among the noisiest.

For Jada Williams, president of the Giant Noise publicity firm, noise is not just an ad concept.

“When clients call on my cell phone and I’m outside, it’s a pain to take a call because it’s impossible to hear,” Williams said. “And it’s hard to explain to them that I’m located in a very noisy neighborhood – so I don’t answer.”

Karen Johnson, who owns two bars in DUMBO, loves to sit in a park in sight of Manhattan.

“It’s so pretty – and then you try to talk to someone and the train thunders by,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve lost some hearing as a result of working and living here. It was too much.”

She moved to the nearby Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens, which she said is almost suburban quiet by comparison.

Sound smorgasbord

On Manhattan’s East Side, residents of the Rivergate apartment building on 34th Street are subjected to a smorgasbord of sound: relentless whirring from helicopters at the East 34th Street Heliport, traffic whizzing by day and night on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and ambulances heading for New York University’s Langone Medical Center.

After years of complaints about 90-decibel noise levels in their apartments, Rivergate’s management installed sound-dampening panes.

Sheldon and Gloria Moline say that when they first moved into their 32nd-floor apartment five years ago, they had to wear earplugs in their living room with the windows closed. Now the only time they use them is when they venture out on the balcony.

“You can’t talk because there’s nothing between you and the helicopters except six lanes of traffic,” Sheldon Moline said. “There’s nothing you can do about it – it’s all legal. . . . That’s living in the city.”